Happy 100th birthday to the crossword. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

If you don't like crosswords, there are a couple of things you should avoid. One is this column – what are you doing here anyway? There's a picture of a crossword right there at the top as a warning to people like you. The other thing to avoid is, I'm afraid, the year 2013.

For the rest of us, next December excitingly marks 100 years since the first newspaper crossword – or, as it then was, "word-cross" – and you can expect a tonne of action around the centenary.

You're planning an event every month in 2013. Will they be UK-based or further afield?

We will make events global, increasing in magnitude as the year progresses. This is not something I am doing; it's something we are doing as an extraordinary crossword community across the world.

They are not just for cryptic solvers, but for solvers of other types of crossword and anyone who has an interest in words.

You imagine a year in which crosswords become "trendy" – what's the difference between trendy and merely popular?

Trendy is: you would be proud to wear a suit constructed from sewn-together Araucaria puzzles.

Natty. I'll take one. Thinking about new recruits, do you think that everyone has a solver inside them struggling to get out?

I'm keen to stress that people aren't always aware that they love wordplay. Sun headlines can be pretty good wordplay. Advertising uses it all the time: I recently saw a black double-decker full of goths on a Ghost Bus Tours trip. I noticed they were visiting the Hearses of Parliament and Notting Kill, but they missed a trick with Deathrow airport.

Maybe for the best. What aspects of setting and solving are you planning on highlighting in the year of celebration?

The human side – for example, showing what's it like to be a setter and how others can get involved in setting. Also, how much fun crosswords can be – we'll be getting people involved through masterclasses, talks and competitions.

And which setters, papers or puzzles do you think are the best places for crossword beginners to start?

If you are a beginner in the cryptic game, try Everyman in the Observer, Orlando or Rufus in the Guardian or perhaps even my magazine Crossword Selection, which has one very straightforward cryptic per issue. And check out the brilliant Fifteen Squared to join a lovely community of solvers who will explain everything!

Finally for now, tell me more about these blank looks you sometimes encounter when you tell people you're a setter.

The other person's mind is trying to compute the information. It's searching down the list of occupations on insurance-risk forms … and selecting "Other".

I suspect that's true. Paul is asking for your ideas about how to celebrate the crossword, and that Guardian readers and solvers can give themselves some wiggle-room around the deadline mentioned in the video above. The address for suggestions or to subscribe to his newsletter is crosswordcentenary@gmail.com. Good luck, Paul!